Day 7 - 1320 Words of Negotiations and Warnings

I actually got started really late tonight, and in the end it only took me about an hour to do most of it. However, I did sit down this morning before starting my day and wrote about 150 critical words that bridged from yesterday's section to today's. Funny how little things like that help.

I also got some planning done, and I'm definitely going to do more of that. I'm a little bit behind in word count, but the more I plan, the easier it is to push forward.

Running Total: 7801 Words.

7801 / 60000 words. 13% done!

In Today's Pages: Karla is given food for thought, and George gets a phone call at an inopportune moment.

Day 6 - 1546 Words and a Flamingo Clip

Today went quite well. I did some scribbling by hand on some changed scenes coming up, and then I settled down and got to the Flamingo Scene, which I think went pretty well. The cat told me I have to stop now - and when the cat says to stop, I must or things will be broken - but here is a sample of today's pages.

(George is trying to convince Karla that he is not an enemy, even though he has just burst into her house to search it. She grabbed the first thing that was at hand to defend herself, and he is somewhat distracted by her choice of weapon - a pink flamingo garden ornament with a yo-yo tied to its beak.)

"Are you threatening me with a flamingo?" he said at last, as if he were not quite sure.

"Yes," she said firmly.

"A plastic flamingo."

"And a yo-yo."

His eyebrows went up, but he didn't smile, but he also didn't look patronizing. Just puzzled.

"I understand the yo-yo. It makes a decent weapon, I suppose. But why is it attached to the bird's beak?"

He might have been just trying to engage her in conversation, but the question did seem earnest. She kept looking him straight in the eye, chin tucked in so he wouldn't see she was shaking.

"Because it's funny," she said in her best, flat, dry Clint Eastwood impression. You know what funny is, doncha punk? she thought, but she said, "Do you watch cartoons?"

"No...." he said slowly, looking even more thoughtful than before.

"If you haven't seen Fantasia II, you wouldn't get the joke," she said, and then she couldn't help but add, under her breath, "Philistine!"

Running Total: 6481 Words.

6481 / 60000 words. 11% done!

In Today's Pages: (well, you know...)

Day 5 - 1319 Words But Not What I'd Hoped

I think a lot of this opening needs to be reimagined, not just retyped and edited. But maybe that's for another draft. At the moment, I do need a cohesive draft so I will bull through.

Of course, "reimagining" is something I normally do when retyping, but it is very hard to do when I am also working, so these day job days are a problem. My brain is just too tired. This weekend, before I got to this point, I found myself skipping ahead to what I was writing today, and shaping it. But now, I'm just editing it. (So I think what I ended up doing was blathering enough so that I didn't get to the really critical part.)

Tomorrow is a day off. Maybe I can do a better job.

And maybe I should start skipping to parts of the story that don't need as much work on workdays. I just wanted to work on this from beginning to end for this draft. Oh well....

Running Total: 4935 Words.

4935 / 60000 words. 8% done!

In Today's Pages: Karla buys the gallon of milk, and evicts Heimlich the tomato worm.

Day 4 - I am pleading misery

I did something Sunday to wrack up my back. I don't know what. Today, the worst of it seemed over, except now all the muscles that were protecting the injury have stiffened up on me. Yesterday I was walking like Groucho Marx in a cast. Tonight I'm walking like John Wayne with ill-fitting underpants.

So I am going to rest, watch Castle, maybe soak my back, and maybe hand write some of the transitions that need work in the next section. If I get those thought out, then tomorrow should go well, even though it's another long day at work.

Day 3 - 466 Words On Karla Bond and Poppins

Long day at work, so I am tired and happy to manage what little writing I did. I expanded on the intro to Karla, and knitted together a few different versions. I still have the intro to Elias to go.

Tomorrow will be a longer day, but once I get just a tiny but tough gap to fill in, I think I have a long fun section to work on that is mostly ready. (Well I do have a few expansions I'd like to do....) But I am ahead on the word count for now.

Running Total: 3616 Words.

3616 / 60000 words. 6% done!

In Today's Pages: Karla uses her movie maven powers for good.

Day 2 - 1629 Words And The Other Beginning

I had a friend tell me she thought I should start with the intro to Karla, rather than George. It doesn't require much rewriting (just flipping this section and that) so I will probably try it. (I may ask for readers next week, if anybody is interested. I'll let people know how to contact when I'm ready.)

Now, swapping things around may well play havoc with the chapter structure I planned. Which is okay. I just might have to get three chapters done before I know for sure where the chapters breaks happen.

Chapter breaks are so important, and I am a fan of chapters with names, too. I think they work very often as teasers, at least in comedy and high adventure. You don't necessarily have to have cliff-hangers if your breaks simply raise questions, and your titles promise to answer them.

Running Total: 3150 Words.

3150 / 60000 words. 5% done!

In Today's Pages: Intro to Karla. Gwen makes a stand.

Day 1 - 1521 Words To Get Me Started

I was going to start the dare with a great blog post full of philosophical insight, but I'm tired. Beginnings are so important, and I had to do a lot more work weaving together the best of the various versions I have.

I did do some math and figured that for this 51 day dare, I have to average 1200 words a day. I have set the minimum for each day, though, at 1000. I have some tough days coming this week.

Running Total: 1520 Words.

1521 / 60000 words. 3% done!

In Today's Pages: George deals with several of the women in his life. And longs for even crappy American lo mein.

Here it is - The First Page

Tomorrow I start the dare!

I didn't finish the outline this week, but I am so eager to get going, that I decided to jump the gun and polish up my new opening. And just to keep myself committed, I decided to post the first page, right here and right now!

The Man Who Did Too Much is what I would call a comic cozy suspense novel. It features George Starling a former man of international intrigue, and Karla, a small town spinster, neither of whom really want to be tangled up in an international kidnapping plot - but nobody gets everything they want.

Chapter 1 - Saint George

George Starling, recovery agent for Benson Kravitz International -- no, make that ex-recovery-agent -- sat on the edge of the leather chair in the office of the therapist of the woman he more than likely loved with all his heart and soul.

Given all of the modifiers in that thought, he probably belonged there, but he wasn't there for his own sake and didn't particularly want to be there. The shrink was young and she was posturing and he didn't like her. It's just that Gwen had decided she wouldn't go, so George did it for her. Somebody had to.

The shrink sat upright and a little stiff, like she sensed his dislike. He slumped a little to indicate surrender, and she gave him a small superior smile.

"So," said the shrink, "the entire relationship consists of you hovering over her and waiting for her to want something."

"I wouldn't say there is a relationship at all. Yet." He'd thought he was agreeing with her, but she didn't like the answer and she raised her chin and fixed him with a look.

"And there won't ever be one if you don't stop being the knight to her damsel and do something normal with your lives."

"Like ... what?" he said in sudden exasperation. "I don't know how to do anything else, and she just won't. I can't make a normal life for her if I don't know what it is that she needs."

George sat back, surprised at his own vehemence. The shrink was smirking at him again. He took a deep breath.

"I think it's bloody obvious what we need."

"You can't make her life for her, George."

"I have to. I promised."

So there, a beginning. It will probably have to torn apart and redone. But I think the approach is right, anyway.

See ya tomorrow with real word counts and progresses.

Getting Ready Day 4 (of 5)

The drama of the day job has struck as the beginning of the semester grinds onward. (And all was going so well, but the stress eventually hits us all hard.)

Still, I got some good work done on the outline. I now have a good sense of the arc of the beginning of how the first four or five chapters go.

I have decided on my approach to the beginning, which I guess uses all of the techniques I talked about last week. I suppose it is more "right in the action" but it's action that is mainly narrative dialog. (It's George vs. Gwen's therapist. The question is only whether the therapist is a mere straight-person, or if I could use her in another minor roll later too. I think if I decide to do that, I can tweak the first scene later to fit.)

Getting Ready Day 3 (of 5)

My brain is barely functioning, and yet I got some outlining done. I'm not trying to actually plan or think yet, but just to record, in story order, all the notes and scenes I already have. (Basically collate what I've got.) This is something I can usefully do even when my brain is so tired I can't remember my own name.

I have, of course, old notes with turns of dialog, and different versions of various things - and now I can sit down and look at them all before I throw myself into each scene.

The first three chapters, I think, are mostly in order. I hope to have an actual snippet of the beginning to post here on Saturday night.

(Progress on the website, unfortunately, requires more brain cells than I currently have, but maybe I can get sufficient work done over the weekend. In the meantime, Orange Kitty decided it was a good evening to give my hand a thorough washing, which was a really relaxing sandpaper massage.)

Getting Ready Day 2

I didn't do much today. The early and long days at Day Job are getting to me. But I did organize all the paper I had printed out, and I started a document for note taking....

On the bright side, it looks like I could have light day on Friday, which will give me a break before we start the dare. In the meantime, sleep.

Getting Ready Day 1

The goal for the next five days, if you remember, is to work on my author website, and print out and organize all materials related to the current project, and create an outline, so I can drive through a retyping from scratch in the next dare (which will start Saturday).

Today, I worked on the banner image for my website. I've got a working image and a layout and the CSS mostly done.

I also printed out all of the existing written pages on the novel, including discarded scenes and old versions. There are maybe a few more bits and pieces yet to be rounded up, but I think I can "inventory" the material and get a good idea of where the gaps are and such.

Tomorrow, another trying day at the day job (the computers have decided to really be squirrelly this week), but I should be able to push through another step when I get home.

Scene Location, Location, Location

I'm not one of those writers who saturates a story with a sense of place. Yes, I do love a great regional or historical novel which is thusly saturated, but I don't think every novel needs ten pages per chapter of setting.

Even so - even if you are writing a bare-bones bump-and-go adventure screenplay - setting is still extremely important to story. Even if you never mention or describe it. Setting is context. It gives shape and meaning to the other elements. ("A character in a setting with a problem.")

So often the setting is the trigger that brings a scene to life for me as a writer. It is the piece that makes a scene ready to write. I may not know what the characters are going to do yet, but once I know what they want, and where they will be when they want it, the scene flares. The ground becomes a playing board, a battle ground.

This is why, when I realized that there was a sandy trail along the rim of the old gravel pit behind karla's house, a number of scenes suddenly woke up and came to life. Not only was this trail a perfect place for a chase scene, but when you have a truly evocative setting like that, it affects other scenes. A trail like that connects other locations ... and people too. It's the path to town, to the beach, and to a small lake in another direction, and to the woods and the sledding hill. It is where you wold naturally ride your ponies and go cross country skiing. That path is the essence of Potewa county.

And as the story begins to pull together, I see that it also connects us to the perfect place for the climax of the story.

Protagonist, Protagonist, Who's got the Protagonist?

There was a brownie emergency in the household, and I had to stop and make some before I could get on with my posting. But now that the brownies are in the oven....

I may go back to starting this novel with George. The question is who is in the most interesting place at the start of the novel? George is. At the very beginning, Karla is in an interesting place because George is coming for her, but she doesn't know it yet. If you know her happily ordinary satisfied life is about to be turned upside down, then it is more interesting even in its ordinariness.

So who is the protagonist? I was trained to believe there is only One True Protagonist in every story, but I really don't believe that any more. Love stories and buddy stories (which Blake Snyder considers to be the same genre) are always dual protagonist stories...

And in my opinion, a lot of the great cozy mystery series are dual protagonist stories, even when they aren't romance or partner stories. Miss Marple, for instance, is a character who is very satisfied with her life and needs nothing. Same with Miss Seeton. And Mr. and Mrs. North. And Perry Mason. Very often the protagonist role is shared by the police detectives or clients or ordinary folk in trouble in these series. Sometimes all three.

I think the reason this works in a mystery is because the central problem of the story is the case. It doesn't just belong to one character. The story is resolved when the case is resolved. The problems of the individual characters are subplots.

Now, with my story, there really isn't that much question, there are definitely a series pair of detectives. And they are dual protagonists in the story. But even with partners, you often have one who is the "straight man" - the relatively normal one who the reader is expected to identify with more. It would appear that in this story that one would have to be Karla, who would seem an ordinary small town, middle-American woman who leads an unexciting life. She's not as forceful as Miss Marple. A little daffier. But I think the Miss Marple model is close to the one I need to go for.

George may be more exotic, but he is definitely the most changed by this story, and he definitely learns much more from Karla than she learns from him. He brings adventure to her, she gives him wisdom in return.

And that means, I think, that we start with George.

Novel Dare Goals for 2010

The big goal right now is to get The Man Who Did Too Much done, and then rewritten and ready for querying in the fall. And perhaps to be ready to start querying my earlier novel Have Gun Will Play this summer. This will involve more than just fiction writing. I will need to get my author page up to date, and I will need to get my query materials all ready too. Plus some outlines for future books in both series.

I am also feeling the itch on short stories again. There are a lot of interesting small markets out there now, as well as the few major mystery magazines and anthologies. Plus I discovered, with Mick and Casey, that short fiction can indeed be a fun way to develop and play with series characters. I've got a lot of ideas coming at me right now.

The next dare is a two phase dare that will go through the end of February.

Part 1: Every Day From January 4-8

• Author website. I have to work on it for an hour every day. It has to be up to date.
• Plot outline for The Man Who Did Too Much. Not only the plot, but background info notes and most important: a missing scene list. Where are the gaps? Get everything identified so I can move forward quickly.

Part 2: January 9 - February 28 (51 days)

I will be retyping the whole thing from scratch, and will be aiming at at least 60k, with a minimum of 1000 words a day. The first couple weeks will be tough, but I will be mostly retyping existing material at that point, so ... I should be covered. I really think this will get me more than 60k. Unless it turns out to be longer than expected, I hope to get this first full draft DONE by the end of February, because I often have some reading jobs in March.

March and Beyond

The month of March will be devoted to reading, and perhaps to short fiction. Beyond that, I'll have to wait and see. I hope to get a lot of rewriting, plus another script and maybe another novel done by the end of the year.